


some words build houses in your throat

by only_more_love



Series: Endgame Responses [20]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Background Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Complicated Relationships, Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Infidelity, Gen, Irish Steve Rogers, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Tony Stark, Team as Family, Walt Whitman - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-14 02:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_love
Summary: The night before they travel back in time, Tony says what he needs to say.Written for the Tony Stark Bingo 2019 - Square R3: Writing Format: Missing Scene/Epilogue/Coda.{Also a response to this prompt: “stevetony + confession," for a three-sentence fic meme on Tumblr. Thanks, Anonymous. :)}





	1. sister, sister, will you keep me?

**Author's Note:**

> Life isn't always clean and by extension, neither are stories. Because it's canon that Tony is married to Pepper during parts of Avengers: Endgame, some of what’s in this fic lands solidly in what I’d classify as emotional infidelity territory. If fictional emotional infidelity is a major squick for you, you might want to hop out now.
> 
> This was written in response to [this three-sentence fic meme](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/185278138668/meme-three-sentence-fic-meme) and Anonymous' request for stevetony + confession.
> 
> If you'd like to send me a prompt, you can send me an ask at [Tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/ask). I currently have three more to complete; summer's a bad time of year for me in terms of time for writing, so I'll be slow filling them, but I'll get there.

"[Some words build houses in your throat. And they live there, content and on fire.](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TNSP2ZG/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0)" —Nayyirah Waheed

* * *

  
The night before they plan to traipse through time, Tony stays over at the Avengers compound. 

_Tomorrow _, Tony thinks, _always comes far too soon and not nearly soon enough. _

In the kitchen, before dinner, Natasha leans back against the counter with her denim-clad legs crossed at the ankles and sips her drink, her long, pale fingers cupped around the bowl of her glass. Her nails are cut short and painted a light lilac, but the polish on her index and ring fingers shows chips. One slim eyebrow slants at Tony as Nat asks, “You want a glass?” 

The wine leaves a faint purple-red stain on her slightly chapped lips, a different wash of red than her hair that lingers in tired waves over her shoulders, and a different shade of purple, still, than that which lies smudged beneath her eyes. Endearing and oddly comforting, that’s what it is, seeing the evidence that even Nat, with her cache of smiles that resemble nothing so much as a garrote, and her body that is a finely-honed weapon the likes of which even Tony can’t build, is beautifully, incontrovertibly human. 

“Nah. I’m good,” Tony replies, and waves his hand airily. He sets aside the tablet he’s been tapping away on and drops his chin into his hand. Lets his leg swing out and back like a pendulum from where it’s hooked around his chair rung. Returns Nat’s glance with a wag of his eyebrows.

“You know,” she says, lips quirked up in a motion so small it wouldn’t be called a smile on anyone but her, “it’s not considered polite to stare.”  
  
Tony sees the movement and raises it a grin and a careless shrug. “Luckily, no one’s ever made the mistake of calling me polite.”

A startled laugh leaves Nat’s mouth, as ripe with honest joy as summer days are long. (_ No artifice _, Tony thinks. Or perhaps he simply hopes. Thoughts, wishes, and hopes: a trinity.) The sound of it, as real as the whisper of lake wind shaking through leaves, sings in Tony’s ears, a melody half-forgotten. Half-remembered? It curls feline in his chest and rumbles a contented purr. 

It’s a privilege, isn’t it, to be the cause of such a laugh?

This...This is how Natasha should always sound.

He wonders briefly which Natasha he’s playing witness to in this moment, this moment that will never come again. He recalls one spring when his parents visited the then-USSR without him. His mother brought back a set of matryoshka dolls for him; even wrapped them in pretty patterned paper that felt cool beneath his fingertips as he stroked it. Of course, he’d been too impatient to treat the paper with much care and opted to tear it open as quickly as he could. He pictures, now, his mother’s indulgent smile as she sat on the edge of his bed and watched him. He pictures, now, his mother’s flaxen hair and his mother’s eyes and the gentle drift of her fingers while she smoothed his hair off his forehead, and he examined the small limewood figures with their bright paint, awash all the while in a child’s blissful ignorance of how ephemeral everything is. 

The baby, the tiniest doll, was always Tony’s favorite. He told himself it was the best, most real of all the dolls, like the smallest, most real part of himself that Tony keeps nested inside larger layers of identity. Morgan has the whole set of dolls now—all except for the smallest doll, which Tony carries in his pocket. The set has a place of honor on the bookshelf in Morgan's bedroom, right next to a photograph of him, her, and Pepper sticking out their tongues and making silly faces. He wishes he could give Morgan her other grandmother so easily, too. 

The grief for his mother is old now, time-softened and tinted in cream and sepia hues. 

Occasionally, though, it sharpens; grows claws that tear at Tony’s tender insides.

The missing his mother, however, the desire for a single day more in her company, well, that remains his companion.

“I missed—” _You. _The word surfaces effortlessly in his mind only to drown in his mouth.

“Yes?” Natasha says, giving him no quarter, and he has to admire her for that. 

He loves them all, these women with vibranium in their spines.

After straightening in his seat, Tony tries again: “If I had a sister…” He coughs and sends Nat an apologetic look for his inadequacy. 

As Natasha intercepts it, she’s already crossing the kitchen, moving toward him, graceful, and on quiet feet. “If I had a brother…” Her hand hovers in the air near his right shoulder, and Tony stares up at her, the breath suspended in his lungs. 

No matter how hard he wishes, he can never give Maria to Morgan, who deserves all the love and security that exist in the world. Everything he wanted so desperately as a boy and couldn’t find. Morgan loves her Uncle Rhodey, and she’s met the others, but they don’t hold a significant place in her life. Maybe, if they survive tomorrow, that can change. Maybe it _should _change. Roots, community, and family matter; he wants them for Morgan. For her, there can’t be too much.

After everything or maybe because of it, these are his people. Still.

Natasha’s head tilts a silent question at him, and Tony dips his chin in answer. Her hand settles, small and warm, petal-soft, at the back of his neck. 

He thinks of Titan, then, and pictures an eager puppy of a boy he desperately wishes he could fold in his arms. He thinks of the boy he couldn’t save, the one who never had the chance to be a man. He thinks of lost chances and words unspoken. He thinks of Morgan and her declaration that she loves him 3000. He thinks of ash in the wind, and his own empty, grasping, impotent hands. 

He thinks of all these things as Natasha looks back at him steadily with something unfathomable in her green eyes, and the thoughts give him enough courage to speak. “You do have one,” Tony replies, and squeezes Nat’s hand with his own, “or like, maybe a very distant cousin you see once a year—or something." 

“Tony.” An eye-roll.

He has never known when to be quiet. “If you want him, I mean.”

“Shut up, Tony. I want him.”

“Oh. Well, okay, then. Glad we got that all settled, Nat.”

Shoes squeak on the kitchen tile, drawing their attention. Tony cranes his neck and catches sight of Steve—tall, blond, Caribbean-eyed, broad in the best-worst way Steve—who stands one slim degree away from being a cliché because he really is that rarest of creatures: a good person, damn him. He’s dangerous, as well, though. _It’s _dangerous, how his sweat-darkened tee sticks to the impossible width of his chest. _Kill Bill _sirens blare in Tony’s head, but he doesn’t rip his gaze away as he should. 

(There’s always a “but.”)

Steve hooks a water bottle from the fridge, uncaps it, holds it to his wholesome, sin-pink mouth, and drinks, head tipped back, a single hand melded to the bone at his hip, and Tony, oh, Tony, he wants to be that hand. Or the water bottle. Either will do. He isn’t picky. _Thirsty motherfucker _, Tony thinks, worrying his lip with his teeth while he watches the long, slow, nearly obscene flex of Steve’s throat as he swallows.

Nat’s hand on Tony’s neck twists into a sharp pinch. When he glances back at her, her expression is all-knowing, and her eyes dance with laughter. 

“Nope. No, fuck you, Romanoff,” Tony says, sliding his lower jaw to the side. “I take it back.”

“Mm-mm,” Natasha says, removing her hand from his neck and slowly shaking her finger back and forth, “Family’s family, Stark. No take-backs. It’s way too late for that now.”

“Too late for what?” Steve asks, eyeing them carefully. Drops of water gleam on his lower lip. At the sound of his voice, Tony’s pulse picks up speed. 

“Too late for everything,” Tony answers before Natasha can speak up.

Steve stands there, untouchable, one hip to the counter, all pink-cheeked flush of exertion and the stuff of both Tony’s dreams and Tony’s nightmares, gaze thoughtful as it tic-tocks back and forth between Tony and Natasha. His expression remains considering as he rubs at the vulnerable skin of his wrist. _Why won’t he stop touching himself? _Tony wonders. Luckily, Steve doesn’t force the issue and push for clarification.

(And it istoo late; Tony wasn’t lying about that. Once upon a time, long ago and far away, these people made homes in Tony—fit themselves inside the curved collagen and calcium architecture of his ribs. 

Though their bonds have stretched and even turned brittle, they have never fully broken. 

He won’t be able to evict them. He doesn’t even want to anymore.)


	2. and if you were drowned at sea, i would give you my lungs so you could breathe.

There’s music clipping through the ceiling-inset speakers. All jazzy, brash, and bright, with a strong syncopation that gets Tony’s feet tapping in counterpoint. It drips around Tony, snaring him in a sonic net.

Humming softly under his breath, Bruce tips several spoonfuls of liquid into a large copper pot of what looks like milk, then stirs the concoction with a wooden spoon. That done, he switches off the stove and then uses potholders to grasp the pot and pour the entire steaming contents into a colander lined with a thin, net-like fabric. The steam climbs and swirls playfully, fogging Bruce’s glasses. The effect is one of charming befuddlement. 

Tony smiles. 

“I’m making paneer,” Bruce says, and Tony’s mouth waters.

“Yum.”

Unbothered by Tony’s attention, Bruce tightens and twists the cloth into a small bundle that he then sets aside in a bowl the color of ruby red grapefruit flesh before he goes to work grinding a handful of some unidentified spice. His work releases a warm fragrance into the air; Tony can’t help but drop his forearms on the counter next to Bruce, lean closer, and inhale deeply. The pestle looks ludicrously small in Bruce’s huge, Professor Hulk hand as he pushes it into the mortar, but somehow he makes it work. 

It’s not difficult to be happy for his friend, who seems to have found some tiny measure of peace in spite of Thanos and the destruction he wrought so gaily. Or maybe Thanos was the catalyst. Not that he deserves anything more than an Iron Man boot up the ass for that.

Watching Bruce returns Tony to boyhood, to violet-stained twilight hours he spent pressing graphite into milk-white, blue-veined paper—sketching diagrams and quadratic equations—while Anna moved self-assuredly around the warm, good-smelling kitchen, chopping and stirring and conducting a culinary orchestra. Unlike his father, Anna had never seemed to mind Tony’s presence in her domain or make him feel like an intruder; she’d simply let him be as she went about her work.

(His boyish eyes had thought Anna the most beautiful woman in the universe, second only to his mother.)

There have been moments in the long years since then when, as he’s lost himself in his workshop, with his bots and his creations and a huge world of possibilities, Tony’s imagined he’s channeling Anna. Certainly, he tries to emulate Anna whenever Morgan’s curiosity or her simple desire to be with her dad bring her to him when he’s otherwise occupied. He figures he’s got a limited number of years where she’ll want to hang out with her old man, anyway.

Anna would pause in her work to gift him a smile or ruffle his hair in that gentle but proprietary way she had, then slip her hand into the pockets of her yellowed apron and come back out with various small treats. Sweet, buttery toffee chews hidden in shiny, foil wrappers on some days. Spicy ginger hard candies on others. The toffee usually clung to his teeth, not that he minded. Tony would just use his tongue or a well-placed finger to dig out the last, stubborn bits. The ginger candies Tony would tuck into the pocket of his cheek and suck, a warm glow of satisfaction in his belly at how they shrank, slowly, so very slowly. 

Every so often, Anna would glance at him, the damp warmth of the kitchen blooming roses in her cheeks, and say, “You look exactly like a chipmunk, Anthony.” He’d grin back at her and make exaggerated chewing sounds.

Once upon a time, the boy Tony used to be was convinced that the secrets of the universe were contained inside the pockets of Anna’s ancient, tea-and-food-spotted apron. Who knows? Maybe he’d been right.

“Can I help with anything?” Tony asks, returning to the present and bumping his hip against Bruce.

As Bruce pauses to look at him, his glasses slide down his nose and dangle there precariously. “No, thank you, Tony.”

Tony catches a rolling, library-style footstool with his foot and tows it toward Bruce before hopping up on it. Using a single finger, Tony pushes Bruce’s glasses back up his nose, then pats him gently on the cheek. “Then my work here is done.” Just then, Tony’s stomach looses an embarrassing growl. “Sorry,” he mutters.

Bruce smiles a response, a soft, wispy thing that should be incongruous on his Hulk face but somehow isn’t. “Dinner should be ready in about forty minutes.” 

There’s something about how Bruce’s still looking at Tony that makes him think he has more to say. For his sake, Tony summons patience.

“I’m glad you’re staying,” Bruce eventually says, and there are strata of meaning, feeling, and intent just beneath the placid surface of his unvarnished words.

Tony thinks he’s excavated maybe 25% of them, and that’s okay.

His face creases in a smile echoed by his heart as he tweaks the checkered towel slung over Bruce’s huge shoulder. “Me, too, buddy. Me, too.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to reblog this chapter, it's [here on tumblr](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186931690263/thank-you-for-the-prompt-anonymous-and-your).
> 
> Thank you for reading. If you have a moment to leave kudos and a comment, I'd be grateful for hearing your thoughts. I respond to all comments, though sometimes it takes me a while.
> 
> You can also find me at [onlymorelove.tumblr.com](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com), where I post GIF sets, ramble, etc.; come talk to me if you like. I do not bite. :) I reblog other people's stuff at [onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com](http://onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com).


	3. you love me even when i run

Determined to ignore his rude, noisy stomach, Tony wanders out to the dock, one hand curled around a tall glass of iced tea Bruce gallantly poured for him. His tongue itches for the mellow heat of good Scotch, and it’s been so long since he’s had a drink; it’s extremely tempting to dig up the 1926 Macallan he picked up at Christie’s in London for a crisp $1.53 million more than a few years back—what’s he even saving it for when the worst-case scenario’s already happened and Thanos has come and gone?—but Tony resists the pull: he wants a clear head for tomorrow and 2012 Manhattan. 

With a sigh, he sets the glass on the dock and follows it down with his body. He cuffs his jeans, rolling them to just below his knees; removes his socks and shoes; has just closed his eyes in blessed relief as he slipped his feet into the lake, the cool water parting almost soundlessly around his skin and gently kissing from his toes to his ankles, when the wooden boards groan and the air around him is disturbed as someone settles next to him. 

Even with his lids shuttering his eyes, Tony knows who else is present: Steve. Though he hasn’t figured out how it works—yet, at least, but give him time—even blind and deaf at the (next) end of the world, Tony’s certain he’d recognize Steve. Everything in him reacts to Steve’s presence, seeming to sit up at attention and say _ Oh, it’s you_; _ I’ve been waiting for you_. 

Time travel’s a fickle and treacherous beast; who knows what will go wrong when they reverse the clock? He’s a futurist and has lived long enough to become a pragmatist, too; he’s a father, and he doesn’t have the luxury of pretending what they are about to do doesn’t have certain risks packed into it alongside the possibilities. So he’s made arrangements—for Morgan and Pepper, for Happy, for Rhodey, for May, and for his other Avengers (marshmallow-hearted old fool that he is, Tony’s accepted they are his, or perhaps they belong to each other)—in case things don’t go as smoothly as they all hope they will. 

“Should I go?” Steve asks. “Do you want to be alone?”

_ No, I’ve been without you for years; why would I choose to be alone now? _“Two separate questions, big guy,” Tony answers, deliberately keeping his tone light and playful, “possibly with two different answers.” His hand finds his glass, clicks his nails against the rim, and swirls it. The ice cubes inside tinkle with a sound like laughter. 

He’s missed Steve’s laugh—has spent years learning to live without it, in fact. Since Germany. Since Siberia. How he used to laugh in Tony’s workshop, loose and bright, when DUM-E would pat him on his head like he was a dog, beeping joyfully, or snatch up one of Steve’s drawing pencils with a claw and refuse to return it until Steve gave in and hugged him.

Tony’s discovered it’s worse to have something and lose it than it is to never have had it all.

Without answering, Steve makes as if to rise, and Tony watches his chance start to slip away, grains of sand spilling through his cupped hands.

After switching the glass to his other hand, Tony shifts. Before he can talk himself out of doing it, Tony’s hand darts out and catches Steve’s cheek, his fingers damp from the condensation collected on the outside of his glass. Steve inhales sharply and sits back down again, watching Tony, a tiny tremor working at one corner of his mouth. 

His eyes are the truest blue Tony has ever seen, the kindest, the softest, the coldest, too, at times, the standard against which all others are measured and found lacking; they track back and forth between Tony’s eyes as if searching for something. What is he searching for? “You probably _should _ go,” Tony says, and though his better angels are screaming at him, he just tells them to shut up, “And if you want to, I won’t stop you. But I’d rather you stayed.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I want a lot of things, Steve.” He can’t resist teasing Steve. What can Tony say? He’s played at being good, sure, without ever truly embodying goodness. Tony allows his lips to curve into a slow smile as his gaze dips to the soft, pink bloom of Steve’s mouth. (A mouth that sweet should be kissed, early and often and thoroughly.) “You gonna give ‘em all to me?”

They stare at each other, the moment expanding and gathering weight, Tony waiting to see how Steve will respond, and Steve waiting for— Well. Well, Tony has often wished he knew what Steve’s thinking. He never has. Certainly not now.

“I’m too slow for your riddles,” Steve replies, eventually, as if he expects Tony to accept that copout of a response. Fat chance of that. He’s the first to look away, angling his body and his head out toward the lake instead.

Tony shakes his head and eyes the clean contours of Steve’s profile; grins like Steve’s said something amusing. “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he says mildly. He lets the words freefall from his mouth for the sheer pleasure of watching a blush spill down Steve’s cheeks and neck—knowing that Steve will catch the subtext. It’s always been unfairly easy for Tony to ruffle him; to goad him; to sneak metaphorical fingers under his collar and tickle. “You are so very many things, Steven Grant Rogers,” he says, dragging his feet through the water, “slow isn’t one of them.” Tony hasn’t wet his whistle with anything stronger than iced tea, but something dangerous simmers in his blood nonetheless. Not simple recklessness, no, but a sharp clarity that could be so much worse.

“Maybe I should go.” There’s a stiffness calcifying at the edge of Steve’s mouth and along the slant of his broad shoulders. Tony hates it. Then Steve shifts his attention back to him; Tony feels it like a kick to his kidneys.

Damn Steve’s eyes. 

When they turn their focus on him, Tony thinks of Siren song and rocky shoals. Thinks, also, of damnation. If life has taught him anything, though, it’s that hell is here on Earth. Here in him. 

“Ah, but if you go, you’ll never know what I was going to say. One time only offer, Steve.” Tony dangles the mystery in front of Steve and waits to see if he’ll bite. 

Steve stands, slowly, but doesn’t retreat. At his full height, with Tony still seated on the dock, Steve looms over him. The realization sends a delicious shiver of something that definitely isn’t fear cascading through him. “What do you want to talk about?” Steve asks.

“No small talk,” Tony says off a shrug that’s supposed to appear casual. He pulls himself to his feet, too, and peers up at Steve; watches his shoulders straighten and his jaw tighten into tense lines. The posture of a soldier. Steve’s bracing for it—for whatever Tony’s going to say. The sun-warmed wood pressed beneath Tony’s toes and soles feels good—and grounding. “Don’t have the time for it. Only the things that matter. Looks like this is the Tony Stark confession hour. If I were a better person, maybe I wouldn’t do this. But let’s face it, we don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen tomorrow, and I—” Tony pauses and clears his throat; scrubs roughly at his beard.

Steve’s brow furrows, his features taking on the cast of someone braced for terrible news. “Tony, you’re scaring me.” His big hands find Tony’s shoulders—curve over them and hold him there with a comforting weight. Tony can feel it, the warmth of Steve’s palms, of his skin, even through the barrier of his shirt. What should be an innocuous little touch isn’t, because it’s Steve doing the touching, no matter how harmless the intent, and it dries Tony’s mouth and leaves his tongue thick and heavy. Leaves the ancient ache of want swirling low and dizzying in his gut, crawling through his bones, parasitic. 

It’s always, always been like this; it will always, always be like this. 

Remembering a time when this yearning for Steve wasn’t his North Star is possible—but only just.

“What’s going on?” Steve asks. His grip tightens on Tony, and Tony wants that—wants bruises he can map with his own hands for the next week and feel the echoes of Steve’s fingers touching him. Anywhere. Everywhere. “Are you okay? Tell me.”

Tony isn’t going to hell; he’s already there. Right here, right now. Hell is making your choices and then feeling them tighten around your neck, cutting off your oxygen. 

What’s about to happen has an air of inevitability to it. But it isn’t inevitable, even though it would be easier—more palatable—if Tony could lie and tell himself it is. It’s a choice that he’s actively making. 

He’s married; he’s made promises; he loves Pepper; he loves Morgan, who is his miracle; he loves the family they’ve made together in their home by the lake. 

He does, he does, he does.

But he loves someone else, too. Denying it has only strengthened that feeling and given it roots that have curled deep inside Tony. In the darkness, in rich soil but with scarcely any water, light, or tending, still, _ still_, a tiny seedling has sprouted, biding its time. Now it unfurls slender shoots that shove up through Tony’s chest and into his throat. Seeking sunlight.

The sun’s descent splashes the sky in brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. It paints everything in flames. 

The words burn; clamor to be spoken; have built a settlement there made of clay and bone, blood and sentiment, that Tony longs to raze to the ground but can’t, even though he’s tried. He wants to be good—wants to be noble and selfless—but he isn’t, damn it. He isn’t. If he was, he wouldn’t do this. “I know it’s selfish, maybe the most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” Tony says, tunneling the fingers of both his hands through his hair, “and God knows I’ve done a lot of selfish things. I’ve got nothing for you. Nothing, Steve. Nothing.” He underscores this with a slash of his hand through the early autumn air. “I can’t give you anything. But I need you to know. I want to say it, and I want to watch you hear it, just this one time.”

“Say what? I’m sorry, but you’re not making any sense,” says Steve.

“How do you make a Venetian blind?”

At this unexpected question, Steve’s face contorts, confusion clear in his expression. 

“Okay, okay,” Tony says, holding his hands out in front of him in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll repeat it: how do you make a Venetian blind?” Tony can feel his lips twitch, so he sucks them between his teeth to avoid grinning.

Steve’s hands fly to his hips, and his mouth works, forming the words of the joke, even as he remains silent. “I...don’t know.” Cautious. “How?” His weight shifts from side to side on those long, long legs as he waits for Tony to answer. 

“Easy,” Tony says, capturing Steve’s gaze, “you poke him in the eyes.” He enunciates slowly, deliberately. 

One of Steve’s hands leaves his hip and drifts up to tug his hair. It’s long, for Steve, anyway, and Tony’s fingers buzz with the need to touch the sandy strands. Steve’s lips give a telltale twitch like he’s trying to decide whether he should laugh, and then he commits to it, arms crossed and palms flattened against his chest. With his eyes scrunched tight, Steve laughs, silently at first, and then full-throated and easy, his entire frame shaking with it, with much greater enthusiasm than Tony’s terrible joke merits, honestly, but fuck it, Tony’s missed that beautiful melody far too much to care about that.

“Get it, Cap?” With two fingers, Tony makes a jabbing motion, then grins toothily at Steve, pushing his weight back onto his heels before shifting forward again and bouncing up on his toes. “You poke him in the eyes.”

“Yeah, Tony”—Steve nods; swipes a hand at his eyes—“I get it.” His voice is breathless with laughter; Tony almost loses it then. Straightening, Steve narrows his eyes in mock censure in Tony’s direction. “I really wish I didn’t, but I do. You need better material. That was…That was—”

Tony interrupts him, one eyebrow cocked: “A really shitty joke?”

This time when Steve laughs, it’s quiet and soft—not much more than a small puff of air—but still with such an undertone of warmth that Tony can’t help but reach out and touch Steve’s forearm, bare because he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. 

“It’s okay, you can say it.”

When Steve’s gaze slips down to where Tony’s hand rests on his arm, Tony slowly releases it, then swallows thickly as he watches Steve track the movement. “Yeah, pretty much.” Steve shakes his head, a rueful smile sliding over his face like water. He’s living art, always, but it’s eternally Steve’s smile that does Tony in. “Where did you even get that?” 

“Oh, you know.” Tony shrugs and fingers his goatee. “It was in a joke book Pepper’s mom got for Morgan.”

It might be his imagination, how Steve retreats a step, putting distance between them, and his body suddenly goes rigid, all the ease that was there mere moments ago wiped clean away. Then again, maybe it’s not. “Hm. And is that what you wanted to tell me?” He’s not looking directly in Tony’s eyes but off to the side by a few inches, Tony can tell.

“Yes. No.” As Tony waffles, Steve’s eyebrows slowly inch up his forehead toward his hairline. “Yes, part of it anyway.”

“What’s the other part?” Steve crosses his arms; wraps his fingers around his biceps and cups one elbow in his palm; looks Tony dead in the eyes again.

Though Tony wants to smash the figurative glass with a hammer, with the pressure of Steve’s gaze and concentration on him, gradually circling to the full truth seems easier. “You know, all those years ago while you and your band of merry men were gallivanting around the world without me, I’d go in your room sometimes.” It’s Tony’s intention to sound casual, but he worries his statement came off too solemn, too contemplative.

Steve cants his head and shoots Tony an inscrutable look. “You never told me that before.” In his eyes, something flickers, slow enough for Tony to catch but too fast for him to identify. 

“I didn’t?” Tony taps his chin and shrugs. “Hm,” he says, non-committal. “Guess I forgot. Anyway. I looked at your bookshelf, ran my fingers down the spines of your books. Don’t worry, I didn’t go through your things. Huh, let me rephrase: I did take something of yours.”

“What did you take?”

In lieu of an answer, Tony takes a deep breath and says, “‘I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, / How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over / upon me, / And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your / tongue to my bare-stript heart.’” Reading aloud for Steve the archaic language and eroticism in the verse makes Tony’s skin prickle with a heavy awareness. He’s read and reread the book many times over the years—often enough that he’s memorized certain sections—stroking his fingers over the now-coffee-stained pages and imagining Steve touching the same ones, eyes lingering on certain stanzas. Touching something that belonged to Steve had almost been like touching Steve himself. Sure, it had only been a proxy for the real thing, but Tony made do with what he could get. 

A spark of surprise leaps across Steve’s features. With his eidetic memory, he’s sure to know what Tony’s just recited.

Steve stares back at Tony with sunset catching in the soft, golden curve of his eyelashes.“‘And reach’d till you felt my beard,” Steve says, “and reach’d till you held my / feet.” His voice has grown thick and hoarse, a touch deeper than usual, and it shivers over Tony like a caress, sending a flare of heat through him. Tony almost reaches for Steve at that moment, but he shoves his hands into his pockets before the impulse can become irrevocable action. “You”—Steve pauses and clears his throat—” took my copy of [ _ Leaves of Grass _ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass)?” It would be natural and even expected for Steve to be angry at Tony’s confession, but he isn’t. Tony’s been on the receiving end of Steve’s wrath enough times to be able to recognize it, and this is—not that.

“Guilty as charged.”

“Why?” Steve sounds genuinely puzzled, and oh, what a luxury, to be that blind.

“You left.” _ Me, _ Tony thinks but doesn’t allow himself to say. “The book was lying on your nightstand. I’d go in there sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, and I’d sit on—” _ Your bed _ , he almost says before he catches himself and ruthlessly cages the thought. What he’s given Steve is already plenty revealing. “I’d, uh, I’d sit and read for a while.” Some nights, after Steve and the others had gone on the run, when the first gray fingers of dawn stretched across the sky, Tony stumbled into Steve’s old room and fell into his bed, face pushed into what used to be Steve’s pillow, searching for phantom traces of his scent, clutching the worn paperback. Cursing himself and Steve, both. “You marked your page with a drycleaning receipt. At some point, I just took the book. I wanted something of yours,” Tony admits. _ I wanted you. _“And before you ask, no, I’m not giving it back. Finders keepers, natch.”

“That’s okay. I, um, I’m glad you took the book, and...I want you to keep it. Or don’t keep it. Give it away or just—just do whatever you want with it. It’s yours now.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Of course.” Steve nods, a bit jerkily, Tony thinks, and then says, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about your parents. I was wrong, but I couldn’t— I knew it would hurt you, and I didn’t want to be the one to hurt you like that. I...I know I took the coward’s way out, and I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry I wasn’t in NY when Thanos came. If I had told you the truth, I would have been there. Maybe together we could have stopped him. I think of you in space, all alone, and I...I just...I hate it. I’m sorry.”

Tony doesn’t respond immediately. He lets the silence settle over them until it’s almost suffocating, and only then does he speak. “Thank you,” he says. “It means something to me that you can actually say the words, ‘I’m sorry.’” His lips tilt in the ghost of a smile. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure you could.”

“I wasn’t sure I could, either,” Steve says, shamefaced. He looks away and scuffs the front of his shoe against the dock. Scratches just above his upper lip. “In the support groups I work with,” he says slowly, “sometimes we talk about missed opportunities—the things we wish we could say to the people Thanos took away from us. I pushed you away. It wasn’t Thanos. You’re still here, and Tony, I don’t want to be that person.”

“Which person?”

“The one who can never admit when they make a mistake.”

“Well, congratulations, buddy, ‘cause you just admitted it. Look, you made mistakes and you hurt me. But I’m not innocent, either.” Tony shakes his head. “I’ve fucked up so many times. There is literal blood on my hands.” He holds his hands out in front of him, palms facing down, and notices that they’re trembling. “But I’m still here, trying to— Just _ trying _ , period, and you are, too. I’m just a tired, old man, Steve, and I don’t want to hate you. I _ don’t _ hate you. So if you can, you need to forgive yourself. I forgave you a long time ago. What you need to know...What I’ve been trying to tell you…” Tony makes a rough sound of frustration and covers his face with his hands. Why can’t things just be easy sometimes? “This’ll be enough. It has to be enough,” he mutters into his palms, though he knows very well that Steve hears him. For the next part, he uncovers his face and looks up at Steve. He has to. It’s an illusion, of course, it is, but time seems to thicken and turn molasses-slow as Tony licks his dry lips and shivers at the touch of a cool breeze against the back of his neck. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we time travel tomorrow, and this is too important. I need you to know...You should know that I—that I love you.” These words leave Tony on a quiet breath. These words are for both of them, for himself and for the man who’s staring back at him with sunset catching in the soft, golden curve of his eyelashes. “I’m not asking for you to...to love me back,” he rushes to add. “I know you don’t, and it’s okay. I have nothing to offer you, anyway. I can’t leave Pepper. I—"

Steve cuts him off. “How do you know?”

“What are you talking about?”

“How do you know that I don’t?” In front of Tony, Steve stands rigid. Tony can’t help but admire the pugnacious twist of his mouth. “What makes you an expert on my feelings?” A muscle in Steve’s jaw flexes.

“I’m not an expert. I just know that you...you can’t.”

“Why?” Steve’s nostrils flare. He’s not shouting, but his tone is undeniably aggressive. “Tell me, what do you mean when you say you love me?” he asks, and Tony can see the fight leave him.

Tony swallows. “That’s easy,” he says, face almost unbearably hot, but the fact remains that uttering those three words felt easier than explaining what they mean. “I mean that knowing you’re out in the world makes me happy. I mean that I want you to be happy.” With each successive word, Tony’s voice slants quieter, softer. “Things happen, and I want to talk to you about them. I see things, and they...they remind me of you. When I wake up, you’re one of the first things on my mind, and right before I fall asleep, you’re one of the last things I think about.” The last sentence is nothing more substantial than a whisper. 

“Then you’re wrong because it’s no different for me.” Steve touches Tony’s chin; gently pushes it up so they’re looking at each other again. A sigh whispers from his mouth, and then he speaks. “[ _ Tá mo chroí istigh ionat. _ ](https://inirish.bitesize.irish/2537)”

The unfamiliar words melt over Tony. There’s a lyrical quality to whatever Steve just said, but Tony can’t decipher the meaning. “What’s that mean?” 

He’s unprepared for the small, sad smile that finds Steve’s mouth. It immediately makes Tony want to wrap his arms around Steve until he stops looking like that.

“Just something my ma used to tell me every night before bed.” 

“You’re not getting off that easy, buddy,” Tony says because they’re matched in their stubbornness. “Tell me what it means,” he adds, pushing a little command into his voice. 

With a single fingertip, Steve touches him, starting at his hairline, stroking between his eyebrows and down over his nose. He stops just short of Tony’s mouth, his finger settling soft and soundless as a snowflake in the tender divot above his upper lip. Tony can feel Steve’s finger shaking. “It means, ‘My heart is within you,’” Steve finally answers. His hand falls away from Tony like it was never there, and a fierce ache seizes Tony. “If you don’t understand what _ that _means, I don’t think I can help you.”

Even as pain curls inside him, Tony laughs, quietly, and shifts on his bare feet. “No, I get it.”

“So where does this leave us?” Steve asks. He’s still standing there only a few scant inches from Tony, but it’s too far. Too far. It feels like he’s across the world again and Tony needs him. He needs Steve, who isn’t there. 

“Nowhere.” Tony thrusts his hands into his pockets to keep himself from doing anything (else) stupid. “Same place we were before, I guess. I won’t leave Pepper. I love her, too, and I owe her a lot.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Steve replies, and Tony believes him. “You have a life, and that’s as it should be.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have more to give you.”

Steve shakes his head, thin-lipped. “No, don’t apologize—not for that and not to me. You gave me a home, and...and you gave me words I never, ever expected to hear.”

“You can say it, you know.”

“Say what?”

“You can say that I love you. At least here with me, you can. Maybe never again, but for now…”

“You love me.” And there is a raw wonder in Steve’s voice.

“I do. Very much.”

“_ Me _.” 

The disbelief in that one word cracks Tony open—leaves him a fatal wound at Steve’s feet. “Dance with me?“ he asks. “Just once.”

“I can’t. Never got the chance to learn.”  
  
“It’s easy. I’ll lead. Trust me.”

“I do trust you. Ask me for anything, and if it’s within my power to give it to you, I will. But please don’t ask me to do this.” Steve shakes his head, and Tony’s heart plummets. 

“Then just hold me for a minute.”

“I don’t...If I put my arms around you, if I hold you, I don’t think I’ll be able to let you go. I won’t. And I’ll have to, Tony, won’t I?”

The lie hovers there on the edge of Tony’s tongue. He tastes it, sweet right on the border of cloying. False. To give it breath would be so damnably easy, but there have already been too many lies between them. “Yes, you will.” It hurts so much he can’t look at Steve as he says it. He fumbles in his pocket until his fingers capture the baby matryoshka doll. “I have your book. My mom gave me this”—he places the doll in Steve’s hand but doesn’t let go—“and when I touch it or look at it, I remember that she loved me.” He folds Steve’s fingers tightly around the doll and wraps his hand around Steve’s. “I want you to have it now. You can look at it sometimes, maybe, and know that...know that…” Tony can’t get the rest out, so he just shakes his head and silently rails at his impotence.

“Shh...[ _ Tá mo chroí istigh ionat _ ](https://inirish.bitesize.irish/2537) _ , _” Steve says again, curving his free hand ‘round the back of Tony’s neck and bending until their foreheads are pressed together. 

“I know. IknowIknowIknow,” Tony says until his voice breaks.

A drop of water splashes Tony’s cheek. 

He doesn’t know if it belongs to him or Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. <3 I hope you were moved on some level.
> 
> Tá mo chroí istigh ionat = "My heart is within you" = "I love you" in Irish Gaelic.
> 
> Leaves of Grass is extremely queer. The specific poem Tony and Steve quote from in this fic is Walt Whitman's ["Song of Myself.”](https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/27)
> 
> Thanks for reading. Kudos and comments are always treasured. Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com) if you like. :)

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to reblog this post on tumblr, you can find it [here](https://onlymorelove.tumblr.com/post/186908745613/if-youre-still-doing-3-sentence-things-stevetony).
> 
> Thank you for reading. If you have a moment to leave kudos and a comment, I'd be grateful for hearing your thoughts. I respond to all comments, though sometimes it takes me a while.
> 
> You can also find me at [onlymorelove.tumblr.com](http://onlymorelove.tumblr.com), where I post GIF sets, ramble, etc.; come talk to me if you like. I do not bite. :) I reblog other people's stuff at [onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com](http://onlymoreloverebagels.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] some words build houses in your throat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20894798) by [only_more_love](https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_love)


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